Allegiance
by windeer
Summary: Dying was easy. Coming back proves to be more difficult. Things that never mattered have become suddenly important. People she never cared about are suddenly precious. How can she handle it? How will it change her?
1. Learning to Hurt

_There are few things on Earth as tragic or commonplace as the sight of child gangs. Almost every major urban centre has them, in some form or another, and they are often seen gathered around transit hubs and dubious-looking café's, jeering and shoving each other as they eye passing pedestrians with undisguised hunger. They are most easily identified by the bandanas they wear tied tightly over the lower half of their face. Brightly coloured and sometimes adorned with simple sigils they serve the dual purpose of informing other gang members of their allegiances and of protecting their throats and lungs from some of the dense smog that tends to collect in the lower sections of urban centres. Most civil servants are required to wear gas masks when venturing under the twentieth city tier, where almost all child gangs stake their squats, but such luxuries are far too expensive for children._

_As a result, lung diseases are common, as are weeping throat, eye and nasal infections. Most of these children are emaciated, malnourished and addicted to any number of dangerous chemicals. Compounding the physical symptoms of ill health are the rags they wear, often torn, burned and stained in a dozen places. Desperate looking creatures huddled together out of necessity more than anything else, they all smoke, they all drink, they all swear and all of them are armed._

_All of them. As of the time of this writing no recorded arrest of a child gang member in the last seven months has not included the confiscation of at least one crude weapon 'capable of causing severe bodily harm'. Pieces of garbage are picked up and used as clubs, chunks of scrap metal are sharpened into homemade knives, tools are stolen and transformed into truly creative masterpieces of warfare. Guns are uncommon, and in this particular environment that is not a blessing. Child gang wars are close, bloody and horrifying. Never assume that because they are children they cannot hurt you._

_They can. And they will._

_- From 'A Culture of Necessity; the Child Gangs of Earth' by Dr. Samuel H. Eisen_

There are times, usually when she is at the edges of her uneasy bouts of sleep, that she thinks back to a time before she came to live among the smoke-soaked alley ways of the lower city. She does not remember much, beyond the sight of the sky through her open window, and yellow lace curtains moving in a slow breeze. Here there is nothing but a sluggish turbulence that moves through the narrow cracks between buildings, stirring great clouds of toxic smog as they scurry over piles of rotten garbage and rusty metal. She lifts the red bandana bound across her nose and mouth and spits on the ground. It is dark brown and thick with traces of crimson blood, but she does not panic. The blood comes and goes, and there is nothing she can do about it anyway.

Of more concern is the swelling in her hand, the purple tenderness across her knuckles and the stabbing pain that shoots up her arm every time she flexes her fingers. She shudders as she remembers, with vivid detail, that sound of bones cracking between steel wall and baton, the throaty laugh of the officer swinging it, the metallic twang of her own blood in her mouth. It is always dangerous to go above the fifteenth tier, at least without any money. If the police cannot take anything valuable, they are more than willing to settle for self-respect. The foot-shaped swath of bruises across the left side of her face is testament to their cruel sport.

"You look worried, Shepard." She flinches at the voice and turns around slowly, trying to keep her face neutral and free of fear. Sickly yellow eyes regard her, rimmed with red in a mask of dirt and black ash. Ditch does not bother with a bandana anymore, not since the blood started coming up with every cough and gob of spit. Instead, he wears a red jacket with a huge black X emblazoned from shoulder to shoulder across the back. "You aren't pussing out on us are you?"

"I think my middle finger is broken." She replies, cradling her wounded hand against her chest. It is not the answer he is looking for, and he grabs her suddenly around the throat and throws her against the nearest wall so hard her bones jar. His expression does not change, his yellow eyes flat and almost disinterested as he grips her face with one hand, fingers digging into her bruised jaw and clenching tight.

"You said we could count on you." He reminds her.

"That was before my finger was broken. How am I supposed to fight if I can't even make a fist?" She replies, her voice quiet and piteous, almost a whine. She winces and feels her entire body tense as he pushes her head back against the wall a little harder. The other Red's are pointedly looking anywhere but at the two of them. Ditch could do anything to her and they would not raise a hand to stop him. He could kill her and they would leave her body right here or, at most, carry it a few feet to the nearest walkway and toss it over, into the swirling world of smog that spreads out below them.

"So kick. You know how to kick, don't you?" Ditch hisses. She can smell the poison of his slow death on his breath, see the black stains on his tongue and lips. He is sixteen, but the blood cough has kept the older gangs from picking him up. His size, strength and potential for wild, random violence keeps him in control here, at least for now.

"Yeah." She says meekly. "Yeah, I know how to kick. It won't be a problem."

"Good." His grip loosens, slowly, and his touch slides along the unbruised side of her jaw. His calluses and scars scrape her skin unpleasantly, but she knows better than to show any hint of her disgust. She shudders as he drops his hand down, across her neck and tiny, pubescent breasts. He mistakes it for something different than what it is and smiles, exhaling a warm wave of air that smells like a charnel house. "If you can do this for me, Shepard, it'll be the start of big things for you. I can take you far."

She is not stupid enough to believe her, not like some. But she has seen what Ditch does to the girls that let him down, to anyone that fails. She nods and he finally steps away from her. It is easier to breathe, at least somewhat, and she takes deep lungful of poisonous air as he jerks his head toward the alley mouth and the maze of suspended walkways beyond.

"Let's go." He says, and they all move forward without question. Beyond the comforting claustrophobia of the alleyways the world is a slippery death trap. Walkways of worn steel, decades old, connect building to building among the towering skyscrapers. The poorly designed guardrails rusted away and fell long ago, or were torn off to make weapons. Everyone carries at least one, a broad hunk of metal sharpened against concrete and tucked into the folds of their ragged clothes. Most carry more than that, their clothes clinking and clicking if they turn the wrong way. Above and below is the same world at this level, nothing but walls of whirling, shifting pollution that smells like burnt hair and ozone. Her eyes water and redden in it as she claws off the ragged jacket she is wearing and hands it to the boy walking next to her.

"Quick, Finch. Tie up my hand." She whispers, keeping her eyes on their fearless leader as he sends a vagrant scurrying with a few solid kicks. His laughter is high and cruel, punctuated by a fit of hacking and spitting. The boy who calls himself Finch looks at her with dull, infected eyes weeping puss. She growls and presses the jacket into her hand. "Tear this up and wrap the strips around my hand. To hold my finger in place."

He understands and the task is accomplished while they move, wary eyes half on their task and half on the treacherous edges of the walkway. She has to snap her finger back into place so it can be bound between its neighbours and feels the bone move inside her with sudden sharp agony. She grits her teeth as Finch clumsily loops and knots bits of cloth around her fingers, knuckles and wrist. A crude bandage at best, but it should serve its function well enough. Just in time, they have reached their destination and the contest is already waiting for them.

In the upper tiers of the city, where the skies are still blue and do not give people cancer, the gangs are territorial for a reason. Protection money, addicts to take advantage of, pride and a host of likewise as violent and petty reasons make border disputes important, deadly important. Down here there is no such urgency. The child gangs have no connections for drugs or weapons tech to sell, and no customers that could pay for it anyway. They can not offer protection from anyone, and pride is something many of them left behind long ago if they ever had it in the first place. Down here territory disputes are pointless, but they happen all the time anyway. Sometimes, like now, it is an arranged fight between two people at the same place. That is hard, brutal. Someone always dies. The alternative, however, is a full out gang war and when that happens many, many children die. Even Ditch tries to avoid that.

"Bug. Are you ready for this?" Ditch calls as they round the corner and catch a glimpse of the View Street Pythons already assembled at the platform. A wide, circular track of metal where the walkways converge there are still no railings here, no safety nets or anything that can prevent the loser from suffering what will probably be a terrifying death. A cold sliver passes down Shepard's spine, but when Ditch waves her forward she moves with strong false confidence to stand at his side.

"It's Wasp." The other boy replies. He, like Ditch, is older than anyone else in his gang and in charge because of it. He eyes them all with mud brown, infected eyes that weep thick brown tears down his face to the bright green bandana knotted over his mouth and nose. When his gaze finally drops to her she can see the sneer twist under the cotton folds. "And is this your champion? Are you fuckin' with me?"

Ditch is not phased, or if he is he does not show it, and merely claps her on the shoulder as though he has the utmost confidence in her. She stiffens and stands straighter under Wasp's diseased gaze, dropping her wounded hand to her side and setting her jaw tight. "Shepard is going to feed your boy his own teeth." Ditch says confidently.

"I'm going to fuck up whoever you put in front of me so badly you won't even want him back." She snarls, lifting her bandana to spit again. The Pythons laugh and jostle each other with elbows but the Reds remain stoic and silent. There is a reason she is here, a reason she was chosen for this, a reason she has not been killed, or stolen and sold into slavery, or recruited by some dilapidated whorehouse. She reaches into herself, as the rival fighter steps forward, and slides into the still well of darkness she carries within her.

The boy that faces her is perhaps two years older than her, and sporting no broken digits but she is suddenly not phased. The world has gone very quiet, the edges of everything drawn in stark clarity that her senses absorb and analyze with lightning quickness. Shepard has never been called a smart girl, has never been to school and seen how her natural instinct translates to book smarts, but she sees the battlefield in a host of statistics and equations. She knows how to bend limbs, how to manipulate bones and force people off balance. She sees every weakness and the many different ways she can exploit them, measures the options in her head and acts with quick, deliberate intention. She does not know how or why she can do all this, but the wonder of it rarely holds her attention any longer.

Her opponent swaggers forward, rolling his eyes as his friends jeer him on. He glances over his shoulder at a particularly aggressive supporter and she takes that moment to strike. Her toe slams into the tendon and cartilage of his left knee with all the momentum her tiny, eleven-year-old body can handle. The boy howls as his leg crumples and Shepard darts forward, steel-clad toes seeking out ribs and stomach and face. Bone crunches as her heel comes down on his hand and the boy under her makes a high sound that breaks at the end and becomes a wet wail of agony.

The Reds are the ones shrieking and jeering now, their voices a red haze in the air. There is blood on her boots, on the tattered hems of her pants and it flies up as her toes crush his nose and splatters her bandaged hand. Once more she is cradling it against her chest almost gingerly, careful not to jar it too hard as she mercilessly continues to kick at the boy underneath her. The contest does not end until one of them is dead or the leader calls it off. The leaders almost never do though. They would be left with a wounded member, a burden that would need to be coddled and protected. A weight not worth carrying.

Finally, his voice breaks entirely and his arms begin to sag, broken fingers twitching against the metal. She raises one boot and brings it down on the boys neck. He shudders under her and she grinds down, harder and harder, feeling his body seize and twitch under her. There is chaotic movement all around, screaming and swearing and red bandanas held up like bloody flags of triumph. Ditch jumps on an abandoned crate and makes rude gestures at the stoic and unblinking Wasp who stares hard at her with his infected eyes as the body goes still and finally, mercifully silent. The wind moves the clouds of sooty air above and below them all around, but the world is still, balanced on the dark viciousness filling her. The thing she leaves broken and empty on the steel is pulverized meat and nothing more.

"You weren't kidding." Ditch shouts, grabbing her around the shoulders and shaking her roughly from side to side. His yellow eyes are feverish, high with the smell and sound of violence. Hands rain down on her from all sides, battering her bruises and the ball of knotted cloth around her broken hand but she feels nothing. The sound of her blood pounding in her ears drowns out the high childish voices rising in praise of her brutality. "You really know how to kick."

The Pythons push her nameless opponent over the edge of the walkway and his body spins down, broken limbs flailing grotesquely, blood spinning in an arch of flying droplets. As he disappears in the clouds of acidic pollution Wasp raises his bandana and spits on the swath of bright crimson that remains behind on the dull metal. His spit is viscous black, like tar.

"You win today." He says, and the Pythons turn, slinking away and cutting their banners from the streetlamps as they go, forfeiting territory. They will be back, there will be more fights and eventually a war. Ditch and Wasp do not like each other, and will throw their meagre followers at each other until almost everyone is dead and someone calls themselves victorious. For now, they head back to their hovel feeling like they have accomplished something, like life is temporarily worth living.

The building they call home has windows and a door that closes, which makes it better than most people at this level. They even have a battery powered air filter that they stole from a matronly woman on the seventeenth tier a few months ago. The air in here is stale and recycled but they tear their masks off as the door closes and gulp it in greedily. Compared to the outdoors it is fresh, clean, gloriously mild on their swollen, tortured throats. Shepard shakes her bandana out against her leg and little puffs of soot and dirt flare up and settle on the already filthy ground. She heads for her narrow pile of rags, stretched out among the thirty other territorial little living spaces in the main room, but Ditch calls her name and gestures her over.

He has his own room, just off of theirs, and the only heater they own is in there. The only reason they have not spread through the rest of this burnt out shell of a home is because they can leech some of its warmth. Every night is still cold, but a pile of rags keeps the worst of it away, as does the tight pack of their bodies in the small space. Ditch holds the red blanket that is tacked up to separate his room from theirs and beckons her in. Her stomach clenches with sudden tension but she obeys wordlessly and steps into the dim, warm room.

"You did good today, Shepard." He says going to the unstable table of scrap he has cobbled together against one wall. He has the luxury of a mouldy mattress too, and a blanket with nothing but a single oily burn on one corner. He pulls a unmarked bottle of some sort of cheap, clear homemade liquor out of a pile of trash in one corner and pulls it open. He takes a long drink and winces at the burning intensity of it before he hands it to her. She drinks as well, hoping it will make what is inevitably coming easier. "I can get some real gangs interested in you. Move you up a few tiers, where the air is still breathable."

She takes another long drink, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and holds the bottle out to him. Their eyes meet, blue and sickly yellow, and she glances away almost immediately. She does not want to play this game, would rather be out curled under her pile of foul-smelling blankets nursing her throbbing, pounding hand. But his promise is sweet, drawing her in. Getting out of here is the only way she will live past eighteen, she knows this for a fact. There is only so much time a person can spend breathing toxic air before their body gives out entirely, just as Ditch's is doing now.

"I can do you that favour." Ditch breathes, taking another drink and stepping closer, leaning around her to put it on the table. His arm brushes her side and she has to clamp her teeth tight and cling to her rigid self control to stop herself from visibly shuddering. "But first, you have to do me a favour."

She has been expecting this. It is not the first time Ditch has demanded favours from the girls of his gang, not the first time he has demanded it from her. Usually, he is wretchedly drunk, and it is easy to waylay him or trick him and slip between his fingers. Or at least, it is easy for Shepard. Now though, there is still the clear intention in his piss coloured eyes, the smell of liquor on his breath mixing unpleasantly with the odour of his internal decay. There is very little in the world she finds more disgusting than Ditch, but sometimes sacrifices must be made. Dignity, pride, self-respect, all of these are secondary to survival. Down here, surviving is all that matters. It will be better, once she moves higher, into gangs with money and influence.

"Have another drink." Ditch says, he seems amused by her hesitation. She turns around, reaching for the bottle and feels his hand suddenly on the back of her neck. He shoves her against the edge of his table and pushes her face down, against the rough, unsanded wood. His other hand scrabbles suddenly at the length of scrap rope that holds her tattered clothing in place and she closes her eyes. The same dark stillness that she finds in battle is waiting for her there and as his breathing rises, breaking and unravelling into ragged gasps, she slides into it.

It is over quickly, at least, and when he lets her go she just slides down and falls in a heap on the floor. She felt nothing while it was happening but as the tall boy does his pants back up her body starts to ache, and then to burn with the pressure of everything that has happened. Her face is strangely wet. She tastes salt on her tongue.

"Don't worry." Ditch says, picking up the bottle and taking another deep swallow. He looks healthier than he has in weeks as he tosses the liquor back, high on his own cruelty and power. He hands the bottle down to her and after a moment of blank indecision she takes it and begins to drink in huge, burning gulps. "It gets easier."

He is right about that at least. Maybe it is just the liquor making everything thick and numb and colourless but the second time it is much easier to feel nothing, to go far away in her head where nothing horrible is happening to her body. When Ditch finally slips off to sleep, his emaciated body spread over his foul-smelling mattress she pushes herself to her feet and dresses with mechanical numbness. She goes out, under the blanket to the main room and curls up under her pile of oily, half-rotten rags and closes her eyes. There are better things coming for her.

Higher in the cities, the sky is still blue on windy days. There will be more food, more security, warmer places to sleep and the fighting will be less pointless. She can put the darkness to better use that petty squabbling on behalf of a stupid ringleader. She feels herself trembling and grits her teeth again, pressing her face against the floor and wishing vainly for sleep.

She wonders what his name was. The boy who they pushed over the edge to be lost to the lowest, most terrible tiers of the lower city in a curtain of spraying blood. She can still smell the hard copper of it on her skin, in her hair and clothes. Her stomach rumbles in her drunken haze, her skin itches under the layer of filthy sweat that clings to her. There has to be something better for her than this. There has to be something more to life.

She does not sleep, but that is not unusual. When Ditch wakes and swaggers out of his room acting like nothing is different, nothing has changed, she does the same. All of them go out into the poison clouds in their daily search for food. Nothing changes.

* * *

Allegiance is a series of stand-alone moments from the life of Commander Sarah Shepard, Earthborn Sole Survivor. They will document her life from childhood through the first and the second game, and her transition from Renegade before death to Paragon after being rebuilt by Cerberus.

This story is really just for muse run-off from my other fic `the Destroyer`so the chapters probably will not be as long and updates may be more sporadic. That said, I haven`t picked a romantic interest for this incarnation of Shepard yet, so feel free to suggest one in the comment section as the story goes on.

That`s all for now!

- Windeer


	2. The Perfect Soldier

_War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself._

_- Admiral John Helton_

Personal Records of Dr. Alda Dahlstrom

Head of Counselling Services for the Luna Combat Training Station

Classified File

(Begin Audio Log)

Dahlstrom: Let's talk about the boy on the walkway again.

Shepard: Really? Can we? (Laughter)

Dahlstrom: Well it must have effected you, killing someone at such a young age. There's no smoking in here.

(Sounds of movement. A match is struck.)

Shepard: He wasn't the first. I mean, it was the first time I actually saw the lights go out. But it wasn't the first time I hurt someone, badly. That world isn't kind to the wounded.

Dahlstrom: I see. Do you hold yourself responsible for the deaths of those people you hurt as well?

Shepard: Not really. Even if I did, I wouldn't lose sleep over it. There's nothing I can do about it, nothing anyone can do about them or the boy on the walkway.

Dahlstrom: Do you feel anything for them? For anything about your life before enlistment?

Shepard: Are you asking if I feel bad about what I did?

Dahlstrom: I'm asking if you feel anything at all.

(Silence)

Shepard: No.

Dahlstrom: I find that hard to believe.

Shepard: Why? The court and the Alliance ruled that 'environmental conditions and factors beyond personal control' made me 'mentally unstable'. According to them I wasn't responsible for my actions.

Dahlstrom: You don't sound convinced.

Shepard: I was a kid. Frost-bitten and starving half the time, drunk, sick, surrounded by the kind of hellish violence that most people can't imagine. I was barely even alive, let alone human. I can't put myself back in that mindset far enough to see my memories as pieces of my life. Everything about it, the fights, the addiction, the abuse, even the deaths… it's like remembering something I saw on the vids. I just don't feel connected to it anymore.

(Silence)

Dahlstrom: So you really don't feel anything at all?

(Silence)

Shepard: No.

(Sounds of movement. Chairs creaking, clothes rustling.)

Dahlstrom: I can't see how recommending you for active duty would be wise, Shepard. Your apathy concerning you past seems to suggest some deep seated emotional issues.

(Laughter)

Shepard: If I let it torture me would that somehow be healthier? Would I be more capable of strapping on a gun and going out into the galaxy to kill for the Alliance if I couldn't bear the deaths I'd already caused?

Dahlstrom: All soldiers need to recognize the value of life.

Shepard: We aren't talking about life. We're talking about death. I have lived most of my life caught in the middle of brutal, pointless, tragic death. It's all I know. I will never be normal, doctor. I will never have a normal reaction to what I've seen and experienced. There is no normal reaction to something like that. Everything about it is intense and insane at a level that not even you and your PHD can understand.

Dahlstrom: This kind of talk is what makes me think you aren't ready for active duty. You don't sound like the kind of person I would want watching my back.

Shepard: Than you're an idiot. Soldiers like me are the only ones that really get the job done. We're the only ones that can take the responsibility that comes with the kind of brutal, pointless, tragic deaths of war and keep going. To be perfectly honest, doctor Dahlstrom, the Alliance would have to be completely retarded to reject my petition for active duty.

Dahlstrom: What will you do if they do reject it?

Shepard: Go back to Earth, probably.

Dahlstrom: Back to the gangs.

Shepard: What else would I do? I'm good at kicking, punching, shooting, and nothing else. That doesn't open up a lot of career paths for me. Being in the military is the only thing that means anything to me. Without it, I'm right back where I started, which is nowhere.

(Silence)

Shepard: Look doctor, you just do whatever you need to do. I, of all people, could never fault you for that. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen, and I'll find some way to survive. That's something else I've come to accept.

(Silence)

Dahlstrom: Thank you, Shepard. You can go now.

(End Audio Log)

(S. Shepard approved for active duty by Dr. Alda Dahlstrom on the 14th of April 2176. )


	3. Sole Survivor

_The only Warrior who is truly victorious is the one who refuses to die._

_- Krogan Proverb_

The cratered ruin of the attack site has long ago dwindled and been lost among the sweltering, poisonous dunes of Akuze, and with it has gone anything by which to measure the passage of time or distance. The ache burning in every muscle says that she must have been walking for hours, must have covered miles of terrain by this point, but there is no way to tell. The never ending sand storms of Akuze obliterate the sky and sun, dispersing all light to create a dull, colourless twilight. The systems binary stars keep the light so constant that any attempt to gage the passage of time is a stab into madness.

Everything on Akuze is like that. It seems as if the planet, or at least parts of it, has been designed entirely to break down the human mind and body. The cool areas near the poles are the only places touched by darkness. Cool and fragrant, supporting a lush growth of native fauna, they were the areas being sampled for colonial development. But the equatorial desert was where the distress signal had been coming from, so they had plunged into this nightmare world of grey sand. The silicate is fine as dust, but every tiny piece is edged sharp as glass, and filled with aggressive microbial life that will eat holes in any organic tissue exposed to them in less than 12 hours. The eternal onslaught of the sun bakes all other life away. Her armour, with its onboard body temperature maintenance programs and filtration systems is the only reason she is not already dead.

But all the wonder of her armour is still just technology, a handful of circuit boards, a few clever vents and some prototype carbon fibres against all the rage of Akuze and its two vengeful suns. It will not hold out forever. She already feels that reality in the hot sweat collecting at the base of her neck and the burn taking root in her throat. The armour mods are designed for six hour windows of exposure, not this hellish voyage through the endless sand. They had been twenty nine miles out from the science teams base camp when the threshers hit. Even at her best, a trek like that would take much longer than six hours.

And she is not at her best. She sags against a rocky outcrop, seeking its shade as relief not from the heat of the sun but from the glare of the whirling sand. One hand scrabbles for purchase as her weary, nerveless legs threaten to give out entirely. She presses her helmeted head against the outcrop and closes her weary, throbbing eyes. A rasping moan she certainly has not authorized her body to make echoes through her helmet as she pulls her other fist away from the crusted blood and shattered, half-melted plates of carbon steel encasing her left side.

Flakes of dry blood mixed with silicate sand crumble off her glove as she flexes her hand and are instantly carried away by the wind. The wound expels a wet bubble of congealed blood, the foul smell of corruption clinging to the scrubbed air she inhales in shallow gasps as she examines the gaping hole in her side. Thresher venom melts steel, dissolves flesh and nerves on contact and then, when it finishes consuming, it settles in the wound and causes tissue necrosis and blood poisoning. The ragged, oozing wound in her side stinks of both so fiercely that she crams her fist over it again, stemming the flow of blood, and shuts her watering eyes.

The signal had drawn them right there. Right to the thresher maws. Eight mako tanks, packed with soldiers young and old, had not been enough to take down those monsters. Everyone had been screaming, firing wildly, thrashing on the ground as their flesh and armour sloughed off in bubbling sheets. Shepard had lain still, fist forced into her open wound as it was now, as everyone around her died. What could a gun do against a thresher maw? It was like taking on a dragon with an ice pick. Only when everyone else was dead did the threshers finally go silent, sinking back into their lairs under the sand.

She had pushed herself up, onto her knees and one hand. And she had crawled, very slowly, for three hundred yards to the stony outcropping that lined the canyon they had rolled carelessly down into. That entire time she had been completely sure that at any moment she would feel the shuddering surge of their presence under her and then their savage roar, sure that death was but a moment away.

She had made it to the stone, and then up the side of the canyon to the dunes beyond. When she looked back the bodies were like toys, limp shapes devoid of feature and tossed carelessly about the blood stained sand. Already the wind whipped the first layers of dried blood away. A few hours and the dunes would bury the bodies. A few days and even the mako's would slip under its grey veil. It would be like nothing ever happened here. She had turned away, and began walking. Her hard suit computer was fried, her omnitool useless. Only the magnetic compass installed on her left wrist gave her a direction, which was better than nothing. Northwest. She is going northwest.

A hiccough of hysterical laughter escapes her and she crushes it in the back of her throat. Now is not the time to lose control. Self control is the only thing that will keep her alive out here. She leans against the stone, clearing the frantic recitations of Alliance survival strategies and gibbering fear away. Reaches deep and finds that same, still pool of darkness waiting for her as it always has. She slides into the serenity of numbness like she had long ago. She has not been to this place inside herself for years. It has not been necessary.

She opens her eyes. The pain is less severe now, the exhaustion less palpable. Feeling returns to her legs, if only somewhat, and she pushes herself away from the outcrop she has been leaning against. Blood seeps around her fist, trickles down her leg, as she takes first one step and then another.

This place is not so different from home, she reasons. The blowing sands of Akuze look very much like the polluted skies of Earths lower cities, clouds of grey death rolling ceaselessly across a shattered, hopeless landscape. The deadly apathy of the world around her is also similar, more in spirit than appearance. The only thing missing is the tribes of feral children, dull, homemade knives hanging heavy in their hands. It is an absence she does not mind overmuch.

One foot in front of the other. She took courses about desert survival in Command School. They all told her to stay with the vehicles, seek out shade, drink water and rest ten minutes of every hour. All of that is useless now, with the punishing intensity of Akuze all around her, nothing and no one to help her. She has no options. She must make it to the base camp, where there will be water and antibiotics and radio communication. They will not be declared MIA for twenty four hours after losing contact. An Alliance investigation team will not arrive for at least seventy two hours after that, probably longer. Their fifty-strong force of marines had been sent out here to investigate in the first place, after all, drawn from every barracks in the system. A much more substantial force will no doubt have to be mustered to investigate their disappearance in turn. All that matters right now is putting one foot in front of the other as she heads northwest. This is the only thing that can save her.

Dunes pass, featureless, numberless, on all sides. She stops and realigns herself, making sure to avoid the natural turn in her stumbling steps that will send her in the wrong direction. There is intense heat, then cold that wraps itself around her sticky, sweat-slicked skin and makes her shiver. Her lips go numb, when she sticks her tongue out to wet them she realizes that they have cracked and begun to seep blood down her chin. She tastes copper on her tongue, but there is no pain. She grits her teeth and surges forward, over the crest of a dune and looks out across the billowing expanse of desert.

There, that horizon looks familiar. A sloping pillar of stone amidst the rolling, geometric dunes of the desert. Maybe. It is hard to tell, her eyes will not stay focused. As she takes a step forward the sand slides under her foot like a living thing and suddenly nothing in the world makes sense. Her shoulder strikes the ground and she slides down the side of the dune, thankfully in the direction she wants to go. She comes to a stop at the base of it, face down. Her side throbs and burns, the white fire spreading through her body with every pulse of her heart, scattering through her body in jittering bursts that obliterate rational thought.

She pushes herself back to her feet, stumbles again and almost falls. The sand has collected in her wound, clotting the old blood and staunching the fresh flow. That is good. She leaves it alone as she begins to claw her way up the side of the nearest dune, going down on her hands and knees occasionally. She coughs into her helmet and tastes more blood. It leaks over her broken lips onto the glass of her helmet, runny and still mostly transparent as it mixes with her saliva. She claws the filter out its bracket on of the front of her helmet and beats it against her arm, shaking clouds of silicate dust out of it before she slides it back into place and allows herself to breathe again. The deadly sands of Akuze taste like ash and rock salt, they burn all the way down as she swallows the thick tar congealing at the back of her throat. She coughs again, and there is more blood, smeared with thick columns of grey. She is back on her feet, moving forward again.

Four more dunes and she is on her knees again, trembling. Drawing air is difficult, every lungful rattles in her lungs and escapes after a few seconds, as if her body is too exhausted to maintain the simple act of breathing. Her tongue is swollen now, pressing out uselessly against her cracked lips. Her entire body feels dry and as she tries to push herself back up her muscles spasm weakly and she collapses entirely, her face smashing down into the surprisingly unrelenting carpet of sand. Her shoulders tremble for a moment and she turns to the side as the blood from her cut tongue pours down her grateful throat. Even that cannibalistic bit of moisture feels divine, soothing some of the rapidly sharpening pain in her chest and belly and wounded side. She closes her eyes and there is sudden, merciful darkness. Her eyes throb in their sockets and she moans wordlessly and lets her limbs go slack.

She could give up right here. No one would fault her for it. She can feel the poison in her blood, the froth collecting in her lungs as creatures smaller than a pin prick chew her apart from the inside out, and the pure deadly exhaustion she had pushed herself into. The human body was not meant to endure things like Akuze. She could die, and people would probably call her a hero just for making it this far. However far this is.

She forces her eyes open again, and that is no mean feat in and of itself. Her hands clench into fists and push her chest off the ground. Her knees dig into the sand. She does not try to stand, standing is beyond imagining right now. A hand moves forward, dragging through the fine sand. Then a knee. Every movement is agony to her tortured, exhausted muscles but she sets her jaw and forces them to move. She refuses to relent. Refuses to die.

If she must die she will not do it like this, alone and inglorious on some god forsaken piece of rock like Akuze. There has to be something more for her out there. There has to be something better than this.

She reaches the top of the next dune and slides down the side to its base, rests for a moment, and then pushes herself up the next one. Squinting through the glare of light reflecting all around her she lets out a wordless sob as metal rooftops materialize, nestled snugly in the cool valley between two massive dunes, drifts of blowing sand building up against the walls. Her weight sags and she slides down the side of the dune again, coming to rest twenty feet from the doors, sprawled listlessly on her back and staring up into the grey clouds. She is absolutely paralyzed, incapable of movement. Her fingers twitch and she feels her limbs jerk spasmodically, but they are not under her control. Her eyes roll back in her head and she feels the mindless black of unconsciousness rearing its ugly head.

No. Her jaw snaps suddenly shut. Her eyes refocus themselves, as completely as they can at least. Her jaw locks and she plants her right fist in the sand beside her. Pushes herself over, onto her stomach. Her knees take her weight, trembling. She begins to crawl toward the door. She will not die, not here, not like this. Twenty feet feels like twenty miles but eventually the cool shadow of the science buildings covers her, the door senses her weight and slides silently open on its rubber airlock. She crawls through the door, sand pouring out of every crack in her armour onto the scrubbed steel floors of the lab. Delirious, she grabs a nearby table and manages to push herself to her feet.

Her helmet comes off, crashes against the floor as she makes her way to the sink. There is bottled water in the fridge, ice cold, but it is much too far away. The hand washing sink is to her left and she sags against it, gripping the edge of the counter with her elbows and claws at the knobs with one blood soaked hand. The pipes moan and pure water gushes forth. She shoves her whole head into the sink, opening her mouth and letting it run down her throat as she chokes and swallows desperately. She is half drowned, coughing blood and sputtering by the time she can finally pull herself out of it, pull her gloves off and cup her hands in it, lifting handful after life-giving, glittering handful to her chapped, peeling lips.

Water. Antibiotics. Distress beacon.

Thought is still difficult. She lurches away from the sink, but leaves it running. For some reason she just needs to know that water is always available all around her. She licks the last drops of it from her fingers as she makes her way to the first aid station. Her legs can take her weight again. There is still a miasma of pain exploding in every cell, but for the moment she is back in control. She finds three doses of medigel and slips all three directly into administration tubes. Needles pierce her, distributing the cool healing agent to her various tormented muscles. The pain fades, very slightly, and she continues her thrashing, pitching pilgrimage. The office. The computer.

The chair creaks and threatens to collapse under her armoured bulk but she does not spare it any thought. Her fingers are huge and awkward on the keyboard, her voice obliterated by the burning feast of the microbes in her throat. It takes her ten minutes to log in, longer still to initiate the emergency distress protocol. When she leans back in the chair she feels like she has done something much more immense and difficult than her walk here in the first place.

Darkness drawing close again. She has no more strength to fight it off. Slumping back in the chair, her eyes slide closed and even she cannot force them to open again.

"Hello? Akuze Garrison? This is Theta 1252 Garrison responding to your SOS. What is your status?" The voice crackles over the computer console, a face appears written in the orange light. She does not see or hear it, as it orders her to respond and then realizes that she is dying right here, in front of it.

"Oh my… listen to me, soldier! Just hold on! We can have doctors there in two hours!" It shouts, and she almost hears that. Two hours? Such a long time. Can she linger in the darkness for two whole hours after all of that? Is the concept of survival, now that it is so near, really something worth pouring so much effort into?

Not really. If she does die, it will change nothing. She realizes this now, as she slides backwards into absolute nothingness, all sound and light dissolving and flickering out around her. Nothing about her matters. Nothing is worth this sharp agony, the burn of her body dissolving from the inside out.

But she will hold on for two hours, if they can really get here. She decides this, with her last sentient thought. As long as life is possible she will cling to it, with every fibre of her being, every shred of fight left in her.

Why?

Because that is what she does. She survives.

This is her last thought. The darkness swallows her, and she is gone.

* * *

I`ve actually had this chapter done for days, but felt like there needed to be something between it and the child gang chapter. Next up we`ll probably be going straight for the Normandy or at least her recruitment for the Normandy.


	4. The Next Step

_Out of suffering and fire emerge the strongest souls. The most massive characters are seared with scars. _

_- Captain David Anderson_

For a moment, he thinks that the onboard locator is malfunctioning and has led him to an empty room, but then she stands and her movement sheds the cloak of shadows and stillness that had hid her from his usually piercing sight. She looks younger than he expected, somehow diminutive despite the strength he can see rippling through her body as she strikes military posture and raises one hand to her brow in a crisp salute. The snug military uniform bulges over a swath of bandages still clinging to her left side but she is otherwise immaculate and apparently untouched by her hellish trek through the toxic deserts of Akuze. He salutes her back, and then motions for her to be at ease.

Her shoulders fall back to natural posture, and her knees unlock, but it is impossible to say that she relaxes. He gets the distinct impression that she never really does, that the electric intensity of her blue eyes never loses its penetrating intensity. She lifts her chin slightly, and they study each other from across the room as they consider what they will say to each other.

"Good morning. Captain." It is a greeting carefully chosen. "What brings you to the medical wing?"

"You." He has never been one to beat around the bush and if her response is any indication, neither is she. She reveals no surprise at the news, merely continues to study him, her blue eyes holding his. He advances into the room and motions to the row of slightly reclined leather seats that look out over the brilliant blue and green curve of Earth. After a moment she sinks into one of them, her elbow settling on the arm rest, hand cupping her chin. He descends the small flight of stairs and takes a seat beside her.

Diminutive is not the correct word, he decides, but he certainly did not expect her to be so small. Five foot four, and made mostly of long, supple legs. Her fingers are long and slender, her large blue eyes the centrepiece of a deceptively soft face. Her file says she is twenty three, but she looks more like she is eighteen to his eyes.

"Me." She says, and turns to look at him. Whatever illusions of frail innocence her soft bow-shaped lips and narrow waist might suggest are swiftly burnt away by the heat of her gaze. They look at each other for a long moment and he can see a muscle in her jaw working, ticking thoughtfully as she grinds her teeth silently. "What do you want with me?"

"Do you know who I am? What I do?" He asks, instead of answering her question. She narrows her stunning eyes and looks out, through the panoramic window at the distant horizon of Earth. The muscle in her jaw is still ticking.

"Most of your mission files are classified." She says placidly, not answering his either.

"But you've still looked at them." He presses. She shoots him a sideways looks and shrugs in a noncommittal fashion.

"There's not a lot to do when no one has any poker money left." She finally responds, shifting her weight in her seat. "The SSV Fenris is a notorious ship, even among the Alliance. Very secretive, operating mostly in the fringe systems on highly classified missions. Not the sort of ship that typically drops by an orbital garrison unannounced for a few days."

"I guess not." He lets the silence stretch for a few moments. "If you've read my files you should have some idea of what I want with you."

She snorts, and the sound contains an ocean of disbelief and suspicion. She turns to look straight at him again and it is his turn to gaze out through the windows toward their home planet. Her gaze prickles along his forehead like a hundred tiny fingers, making tiny hairs stand on end. The muscle in her jaw continues to tick as she stands, and strides across the narrow viewing platform to stand directly in front of the window, staring out into the great void of space.

"Why do you want me? Because of Akuze?" She asks. Her voice is as polished as her posture, just as strong and unwavering. He has met people who survived things half as horrific, half as intense as Akuze and never recovered from them. She, aside from that bulk of bandages under her tailored uniform, is so completely unfazed by it that it borders on frightening.

"Not entirely. I was considering you before the reports were even filed." He replies truthfully, crossing his ankle over his opposite knee and meeting her eyes as she turns at the waist and lets that penetrating blue gaze rake over him again. She looks back through the window after a moment, raises one hand and runs it over the smooth line of her brown hair, back to the military knot it shapes at the base of her neck. "Akuze just proved that all those special commendations you've received over your first year of service were actually worth something."

"They certainly are." She snaps, her voice breaking into emotion for the first time since they began this conversation. Her eyes are two points of burning sapphire when she glances over her shoulder and looks at him, dark brows arched into positions of disgust over her soft face. "I earned those. Every single one of them."

"You don't think your upbringing had anything to do with them?" He asks, even though he knows by this point it did not. Not enough, at least, to erase the work she did to earn them. But this reaction is the first earnest one he has gotten from her, and he needs to gauge more than just her rigid and unrelenting self control before he makes this decision. "Sympathy?"

"You must work for a different military than I do." She snorts, turning away again. Just like that, the flicker of indignation is gone, slid below the surface to be replaced by… nothing really. Her face is neutral and blank once more. "Sympathy doesn't come into play in my life very often."

"I can see that." He says, and she stiffens again, only slightly. She does not turn to look at him as her shoulders rise and fall in a silent shrug, but he can see the tension working through her shoulders, down her strong back and her posture shifts, filling with nervous, violent energy.

"Look, Shepard." He stands and takes a few steps forward, stopping when he is close enough to see her face reflected in the glass window. She is staring, unblinkingly, at the surface of the Earth far below. "I didn't come here to play games. I could use someone with your particular skill set on my ship."

She finally turns around again, arms crossed over her chest and her gaze is flat and unconvinced as it picks over him once more. She is not the kind of person who says or does anything without thinking about it very carefully. In that way, as well as many others it seems, they are very similar people. Her jaw is still working in and out as she grinds her teeth, one brow twitching slightly, perhaps annoyed that he is making himself so difficult to read. She is the kind of person who can learn more from body language and nervous ticks than words. In other words, the smart kind.

"Have you read the mission files on Akuze?" She asks finally.

"I have." He answers. Brutal stuff, distilled into clean military jargon designed to inform without inciting any emotion. Pointless. Fifty dead marines and a twenty-nine mile walk through the burning desert is something that can only be distilled so far. On top of the written report are the pictures of her injuries, rotten flesh crumbling under the surgeons hand, blackened veins full of poison standing out under pale skin, bloody froth collecting at the corners of broken, sunburnt lips. Even on paper that has weight, and all of that was written on her flesh no more than a month ago. And here she is standing as though already prepared for action, the bandage more formality than necessity. He has made the right decision. He already knows it.

"Then you'll excuse me saying that if your missions require the kind of skills I showed on Akuze, I don't really want any part of them." She says wryly. "If they don't, then I'm unsure as to what you think is particularly special about me. All I did was walk."

"Modesty doesn't become you, Shepard." He says, raising one dark brow in the first expression he has allowed himself since this conversation began. Her eyes capture the detail instantly, he can see them still dissecting his face and body language even as her attention focuses on his words. Every moment he spends with her makes him more convinced he has found something truly special, makes him more determined to see her on his ship. He tries not to let it show.

"It's not modesty, it's honesty. I didn't kill the thresher maws, I didn't rally the troops in a triumphant backlash, I didn't do anything particularly heroic or inspiring. I just laid really still and then walked through the desert. That's not something that makes me a great soldier." Her voice is hard, unrelenting and strangely devoid of feeling. She speaks from a pragmatic standpoint, not the mire of survivor's guilt he has come to expect from young soldiers in her position. This is a good thing.

"No, you already were a great soldier." He says after a moment of silence. "Akuze proves that you know how to survive. That's something special, something invaluable in our line of work. If you hadn't made it to the surgeons station they would have deployed a hundred marines, that would have followed the signal from your tanks right back to the thresher nest. There would undoubtedly have been casualties, again, but because you walked through hell there were not. Things like this are much better indications of true potential than combat scores and commendations."

They stare at each other for a long moment and she turns around again, facing the graceful curve of the planet below as her eyes grow distant and blank. She does not say anything for a long moment and he realizes that he has shifted, his posture filling with eager energy. He cannot disguise how deeply he has fallen into the force of her presence, the undeniably greatness beginning to manifest itself in her eyes. There is a part of him that instinctively wants to be around her, fighting beside her, a part of him that already knows she can be depended upon. An instinct that comes straight from his gut and is impossible to ignore.

"You can have some time to think about it. With the upgrades being slapped on the Fenris we won't be ready to depart for another three days." He says. "Life in the fringe isn't easy. After what you just went through, I'm sure any number of easier and more illustrious positions are available to you."

"I don't need any time to think about it." She replies, sounding slightly annoyed that he might think she does. Her gaze flashes over her shoulder, still guarded, definitely not yet at ease with what is happening. But there is ambition there, spurring her forward, and a need for action like an itch in the corners of her lovely eyes. "And I definitely am not interested in anything easier or more 'illustrious'."

He smiles. "I thought not. I'll have the transfer processed by the end of the day. You can report at 1800 hours tomorrow."

"That's fine." She confirms, turning back to face the window. Her expression is still strangely blank, her eyes slipping to places far away as she stares down at the swirl of white clouds spinning over the Gulf of Mexico far below. A hurricane, lashing arms of furious destruction across the world below is little more than a pretty shape from this distance and she watches it crawl along the coast as he taps at his omnitool, sending requests and orders where appropriate. When he looks up again she has not moved a muscle. The tick in her jaw is gone.

"I look forward to working with you, Shepard." He extends one hand and she turns away from the window after a moment to clasp it in her own. Her fingers are pale, long and feminine. They look like they could barely lift a pistol, let alone the heavy sniper and assault rifles her profile says she favours. Her grip is as strangely powerful as the rest of her, not hard but solid as they shake hands.

"And I you, Captain." She replies. This close, he can see the pale pucker of scars where her lips had split open from the dryness of the desert, the scattering of brown freckles under her large eyes and the white line of an old scar clinging to the very edge of her jaw. A few strands of chestnut brown hair curl gently above one tiny white ear. It will take a while to stop being surprised by how pretty she is, how small and almost delicate she appears to him. She drops her hand and folds it with the other, behind her back again. Turns around and faces the planet again, staring down at the broken coastline of the America's, the encompassing stain of the ocean. Her eyes lose themselves in distant places, in memories or thoughts he has no hope of deciphering from his position behind her.

He takes his leave, and heads back to his ship feeling accomplished. As the distance between them grows he thinks back and is slightly surprised by his own actions, his own feelings. He cannot recall having ever been as eager to recruit someone, to know them and work with them. The force of her personality overwhelms the more suspicious, rational side of him. He already trusts Shepard, trusts her to get the job done no matter what, after that irrationally brief encounter.

He shakes his head, clearing doubts and thoughts as the airlock slides open and the decontamination ray flickers to life, bathing him with its itching radiance. She will do just fine.

He knows she will.

* * *

I know I said we were going straight for the Normandy, but sometimes a moment just pours out of you, you know?

Now, we'll head straight for the first game. That said, I'm having trouble deciding which moments from the game I should include around my own dialogue and minor events. If there's any specific scene or event anyone would particularly like to see please suggest it in the comments. I am also still interested in hearing who you guys think should be the ME1 romantic interest.


	5. Visions

There have been many theories concerning the disappearance of the Protheans, from civil war to population decrease and even such things as disease or genetic mutation. The truth of the matter is, no one can dispute any of these theories because there simply is not any evidence one way or another. We can assume that disease might have had a hand in it, because of the apparent speed at which the extinction swept the galaxy. Or we may think of civil war, since few things beyond war have the power to bring a civilization to its knees, once it has reached a certain technological point.

But we cannot provide anything to support this supposition. There is nothing but the slightest scraps of evidence, a few disks, a handful of broken buildings, a few strands of genetic material clinging to an old knife. Every piece of information we have ever found about the Protheans suggest that they were a healthy, prosperous race at the pinnacle of their glory.

When suddenly, and for no reason we can find, they all vanished. Every single one. We have found no mass graves, no destroyed worlds, no nuclear winters. They are just gone, and every trace of their existence has been carefully cleaned away, leaving only the stone and a few loose ends for us to scrabble at.

This suggests more than just simple extinction. This suggests something more in line with extermination.

- Dr. Liara T`Soni

They say all people dream, but she cannot remember the last time she did. Like any experienced soldier, she can fall asleep whenever she has a few minutes to spare for it and rise clear-eyed and purposeful from the moment her eyes reopen. A useful talent to have.

What is even more useful is the lack of dreams. She has seen nightmares torment and destroy other soldiers, even seasoned veterans that should have known better. Guilt is a hell of a weapon, and it can be bent inwards toward the self as easily as it can be used against other people. But Shepard knows better than to linger over the kinds of things that bring nightmares and doubt. Maybe she has made mistakes. Maybe she should feel guilty. Maybe she should feel something about… anything. But she does not. And as a result, her sleep stays clear.

Until now. The faint green light of the beacon had seemed so serene and harmless, like all artifacts of the Protheans did. Even the ruins that had given them the invaluable technology of the mass effect relays were a collection of pale stone buildings, full of graceful sloping lines and wide boulevard streets bathed in the hard sunlight of Mars. There was nothing menacing about these forefathers of the modern age. They were seen, by almost everyone, as mysterious benign beings, the victims of some unknowable atrocity while on Earth a handful of shaggy, primitive humans grouped around fires and wondered at the miracle of it.

But when that green light flares up, curling around her and pulling her forward, she is graced with a far different vision of the Protheans. The forces pulling on her are insistent, harsh, blind and deaf to her fierce struggling. The world begins to fade, consumed by the spire of the advancing beacon and the sea-green radiance of ancient, alien energy. Her boots leave the steel of the docking platform, every muscle pulled suddenly taunt, and her head rolls back. Light pours into her, fills her vision, floods her body until she can feel every nerve tingling with its radiance. Someone calls her name, from what seems like very far away. After that, there is nothing.

Nothing except dreams. Sudden and intense, they overwhelm everything else, even the ability to react to them. Green is burnt suddenly away by ruddy fires of crimson and black as undefined shapes flash and flutter before her. From time to time a fully formed scene will emerge, or a detail burnt clear in a sea of noisy colour. She sees an alien hand curled into a claw of death here, a spiralling spray of strangely coloured blood against stone there, eyes full of terror all around. She can feel the translator installed in her left ear burn suddenly hot, and the metal pins set deep against her femur to hold a weakness in the bone firm seem to squirm like maggots against her muscles. Every piece of metal and imbedded tech begins to burn like an accusation, like an infection, until her instincts scream at her to tear them out with her bare hands just to get them away. Her immobilized muscles twitch and seize with the sudden need to get them out, to be pure and whole.

These details are just the most vivid feelings and images in a sea of garbled sound and light, things she can pick out from the whirling, shifting chaos of these visions. The terror is most predominant. It infects her with sudden, mindless urgency. Something is coming. Something dark and terrible, from the sky and soil and from their own people, if that makes any sense. She has to do… has to do… something. She knows that much. She has to act.

That is all there is. At first, she wonders what new horror this sleep has for her, when the red became less intense, pale light filtering through and dispersing the turgid sheets it has cast across her frantic mind. But there is a voice now, speaking words she can understand, and slowly the light coalesces and forms a ceiling set with round white lights, reality swimming out of the void. The faint scent of panic lingers with her, sharp with familiarity but still tainted with something ancient and alien. She tastes strange blood on her tongue.

"Doctor Chakwas? Doctor Chakwas! I think she's waking up."

Dreams are not something she has missed in the years since she stopped having them. But no dream ever felt quite like that, no dream left such a mark on her soul. Even now, she can feel the warning pounding in her blood like a drum, every pulse of her heart spreading a desperate need for action to every corner of her mind.

Something is coming. And she needs to do something about it.


	6. Ashley

_Religion, like indifference, is just one more mortal response to being alive and having to die._

_- Attributed to Morla So, Salarian Poet_

She has been celebrated by her captains and fellow soldiers for her ability to exude command and attention in the most explosive and chaotic of circumstances. Even with bullets and fire screaming on all sides, she has the ability to command recognition and attention. What is a far more valuable skill, at least as far as her private hours are concerned, is the ability to slip silently backwards and become unseen and unnoticed. In places like Flux, with a dozen brightly dressed alien women vying for the attention of the room, it is even easier. No one has thrown a glance toward her, nursing a bottle of asari brandy in the corner, for twenty minutes or more. The drab Alliance issue uniform, the military knot of her chestnut hair, her blatantly unfriendly expression, none of it invites company. She likes it that way.

If she wanted company, she would not be here.

"You have always known your place in the world." A voice like music rings in her ears, a fresh memory formed not a full hour ago in the dimly lit, heavily perfumed quarters of the woman who calls herself the Consort. She feels a shiver run along her spine, skin prickling as she remembers a feather light touch. "And you have always known exactly who and what you are, for better or for worse."

A pause then, slightly amused.

"And more often then not, it is for worse."

If that had been meant to sting, it had failed. Shepard takes another drink of the sweet liquor, the same strange, warm violet hue of the eyes that had picked over her strong, unfaltering shoulders. She sits up straighter, as though that gaze might find her again here. She feels the same need to be strong, unflinching, to prove that the lovely alien with her exotic purple gaze does not know as much as she has led herself to believe she does.

"You've been watching Al-Jilani's show." She had remarked cuttingly, cocking her head aggressively away from a slender, probing hand and glaring at its transgression. That earns her an almost girlish giggle, no doubt on account of the infamous video clip of the reporter poorly absorbing a right-hook. "I don't need people to tell me that they don't approve of my methods. You are welcome to try and kill Geth with gentle words and diplomacy."

Another moment of amusement, soft painted lips turning up in a small smile.

"I am not here to judge, Commander. Only to observe and offer what wisdom I can gain from it. Successfully rebuked she had said nothing. Sha'ira took a deep breath, as if reorganizing her thoughts and dropped her unwanted hands back to her sides and offered another long, insightful look.

"You have not lived a gentle life. You were young when you took life for the first time. Unconscionably young." Her face seems sad, a softness finding its way into her calculating violet eyes as her gaze strokes the old scar on her jaw, the scar that itches and twitches when she is angry or tense. "But you were younger when your own life was taken. Your innocent, normal life. Your childhood."

"Enough." Her own voice surprised her, rough, uncontrolled. She is always in perfect control of everything. Everything. No asari whore, dressed in scraps of stylish spandex, is going to get the best of her. "This isn't funny."

"Is it difficult to hear?" Sha'ira sounded surprised, raising one hand to her chin. Her soft, expressive eyes are suddenly stony and unreadable, no gentle sadness present. "I wouldn't expect such sentimentality from you."

"I am not sentimental." She had growled back. "But this… is not funny."

"Forgive me." She had said, and sounded earnest. "It was never my intention to mock you. What you did, and what you went through, was terrible. I can see the scars it left on your soul both more and less clearly than the ones it left on your body. I can see how malnutrition has kept you small and wiry, slim despite your hours of weights and push ups and running. And I can see you curled in around yourself, keeping everything close and private. This has made you strong, and kept you safe. As a child you looked starvation, thirst, violence and death in the face, and chose to live anyway. Your first memory, your first awareness, has always been the desperate need to survive."

She was wrong about that. Her first memory is the square of brilliant blue sky beyond yellow lace curtains moving in the breeze. And far away, so far away that word and melody escapes her, the sound of singing from another room filtering through the warm air. Somewhere, sometime, someone had loved her, and that warm, safe hollow is the earliest memory she can muster. But that was a sliver of softer colour in a maelstrom of blood. So small and gentle, most would say it barely mattered. But it mattered to her, so deeply that she did not say anything. The asari could apparently see most things she would rather keep private, but she could not see that. And Shepard was not inclined to share it with anyone.

"This was just the foundation of who you would become, who you are. The frantic, instinctual need to live has evolved into an obsession in you. It defines you, makes you who you are. As long as there is any hope, any chance at all of survival, you will fight for it. But in the end, you have no idea what you are fighting for." That is too bold, and too close to a truth she has never uttered to anyone. Even Anderson, who knows her better than anyone in the world, does not know of the helplessness she feels when she entertains such thoughts of pointlessness. Her anger must show in her face, for the Consort had raised one slender hand and rested it against her heart.

"This is not a weakness." She breathed. "It is something all those who survive horrors like yours must face, what all living peoples in the galaxy must face sooner or later. Your lack of answers proves nothing, Shepard, other than you are truly as human as anyone else."

"I'm not." She had replied, her voice quiet and infuriatingly vulnerable. "I'm better than they are."

"You are." Sha'ira had confirmed gently. "Much better. But that does not make you infallible."

There had been more words, gentle and hard, easy and difficult to accept. And after that, there had been something else entirely. Blue skin lit with a fine sweat as hands and lips moved together, coaxing heat and pleasure to the surface of the skin. The Consort, for all her undeniable experience, made love like a virgin girl. All gasping and arching, her lips parted slightly as she drew soft, gasping breaths. When she came it was with full-body shaking and trembling, her arms drawing Shepard between her small, firm breasts, pressing her head against her pounding heart.

"Leave your hair down more often, Commander." She had breathed from among her sheets as Shepard zipped and strapped her armour back into place afterwards. She had no time or patience for post-coital tenderness. That seemed to be a relief to the exhausted, satiated Consort. "It is beautiful."

She had snorted with disbelief at that, and left without a word. Sex was like killing for her, a brief and intense engagement that she would always remember but never dwelt upon. She was like that with most things, her keen memory locking everything into place within her mind, the intensity of her life denying the most summary of reflections. Except for now, while she waited for Udina and Anderson to sort out the bureaucratic headache that no doubt accompanied the organization of a ship and crew for her. Now, with nothing to distract her, she was free to linger on the wet heat of physical satiation, the pliant warmth of a body close to her. It had been, she realizes as she sips her drink to alleviate the dryness overtaking her mouth, a very long time.

"Commander." She looks up, drawn from intense, erotic memories by the soft, slightly hesitant, voice of Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams. She looks up, a little sharply, and sees the Chief with a drink in her hand. The woman seems to hesitate, unsure whether her presence is invited. They are off duty now, no professional attitudes requiring that they be polite and social with each other. Shepard entertains the thought of sending her away, it is likely that soon they will be on separate ships and it will not matter if the Gunnery Chief thinks she is rude or not. None the less she nods at the other chair drawn up to the small table. Ashley sinks into it with obvious relief.

"I hate these places." She confesses, setting her drink on the table. It looks like a beer, the dark amber tones betraying it as human brewed. Expensive, this far out in Council space. It probably cost as much as Shepard's entire bottle of brandy. "But getting drunk on the Normandy seems like a bad idea, at least while I'm as green to the crew as I am now."

"Anderson is a fair man." Shepard replies, sipping her drink. Does the Chief look disapproving, seeing her drinking asari liquor in a bar owned by a volus? She hopes not. She already does not like Chief Williams overmuch, it would be disadvantageous to develop an outright dislike of her. At least at the moment. She reminds herself that her life is different now. She is a Spectre, and will soon have her own ship and not have to worry about this Gunnery Chief. "But he runs his ship military. So getting drunk on Normandy is probably a bad idea, no matter how green you might be."

It is a mild rebuke, but a rebuke none the less.

"Right." The Chief sips her amber-coloured beer, brown eyes searching hers. "I'm sure the Captain doesn't know about the contraband stashes his entire crew keeps."

"I don't have any stash." Shepard counters easily. "I don't find it difficult to keep my social life separate from my working life."

"You aren't exactly an example of a common soldier, Shepard." The Chief replies, just as easily. "We can't all be as exemplary as you."

Shepard chooses to say nothing to that, just takes another long drink and refills her glass from the bottle on the table. They both drink in silence for a moment.

"You should wear your hair down more often." Williams remarks after a while. "I never knew there was so much of it."

Military women all tie their hair up, or cut it all off, and Shepard has tried both ways over her career. She has also always gotten compliments on the lazy, half-curls of her chestnut mane, on the few occasions she has seen reason to let it fall loosely around her shoulders. It is long and silky soft, falling almost all the way to the small of her strong back. She tucks a few strands self-consciously over one tiny white ear. She fixes the Chief with piercing blue eyes.

"You didn't come over here for girl talk." She remarks mildly. "What are you after, Williams?"

If the Chief is alarmed by having her candour swept so casually aside she does not show it. Her gaze is level and calm in a way that Shepard's seething intensity never is. She takes another drink before answering, attempting to appear casual and unconcerned. Shepard is not stupid enough to buy into it.

"I wanted to ask you something." She says finally, her voice quiet and serious. The bottle is half empty, Shepard realizes as she refills her glass. She is not even approaching drunkenness, which tells her she is not trying hard enough. She downs her fresh drink in just a few mouthfuls.

"About Eden Prime." She says, not needing any nod of assent or confirmation from the Chief. She has braved these kind of raw, desperate questions before. Ever since Akuze, soldiers seem to think she has some sort of wisdom or advice to offer them on the nature of death. She has nothing. She learnt long ago that most people do not react to death in the same way that she does. "About your unit."

She supposes she should feel some sort of connection with Williams. The woman is the same age she was when she lost her entire unit to the thresher maws, and holds the scars of so much death in her wide, dark eyes. She should look at Williams and see herself, young and helpless before the knowledge that kind of savagery brings. She should see the struggle, the need to ask someone why all those men and women are dead. And why she is alive.

"Yeah." Williams admits after a moment. "About Eden Prime."

"I have nothing to offer you, Williams." Her voice sounds weary, even to her own ears. "No great truth, no secret way to deal with it all. They're dead and you're here. That's all I have to say."

There is a moment of silence. They both drink.

"Bullshit." That surprises her, it sounds so poisonous, so full of fire. When she looks up from the swirls of darker violet alcohol dancing across the surface of her drink she meets eyes hard and dark with anger. "You saw your entire unit die on Akuze, just like… just like… " She stops, realizing what she is saying, what she assuming about the woman sitting across from her.

"Just like you?" Shepard laughs. "We're not the same, Williams."

"Oh no." She is trying to control her anger, but Shepard can still taste the bitterness of her words. "I would never assume to understand the great Commander Shepard."

Bold words. Grounds for dismissal from the Normandy, or even court martial if she gets a self-righteous fire in her and pulls a few strings available to her through years of Alliance dickery. She does not react to them, however, merely fixes the other woman with her unwavering blue gaze. The wound in her eyes is making her reckless and emotional, a situation Shepard has been witness to in other soldiers but never herself. It just serves to confirm that they are nothing alike.

"You can't." She confirms softly. "Because you care too much."

"What?" Her voice is sharp. "Are you saying you didn't care when your whole unit died on Akuze?" From the venomous resentment in her voice it is obvious she has no idea how closely she has struck to the truth. Shepard allows a moment of tense silence as she refills her glass.

"Yes." She says finally. "That is exactly what I'm saying."

Williams makes a small sound of disbelief, that dies as a flash of burning sapphire pierces her. Shepard is not accustomed so such disrespect, and her dark eyes shift down, avoiding contact with that fiery gaze. Another moment of silence stretches between them, deep and still despite the pounding of the dance music all around them. She drains the last foamy traces of beer from the bottom of the glass.

"They died for no reason." She says finally. It is a belief she has long kept silent. The beacon led them straight to an empty valley full of thresher maws. No coincidence that, no subtle twist of fate. Her security clearance in the Alliance has only granted her enough access to know that there are top secret files concerning the deaths of the marines on Akuze. It has revealed no details, no greater purpose behind that tragic loss of military life. It has led her to the conclusion that whatever those men and women died for, it was ultimately pointless. "Your soldiers died defending innocent civilians from nightmare foes. They died for what they believed in, what was right and just. Mine died for nothing. The situation is not the same."

"That's not what you said." Ashley counters, stubbornly. "You said you didn't care."

Shepard sighs, defeated.

"What do you want me to say, Williams?" She asks finally. "Do you want me to tell you I have nightmares? Do you want me to describe some poignant, smothering grief?" She tries not to sound mocking, but it is difficult. Grief is not something she respects, not something she has time and energy for.

Williams says nothing.

"I have nothing to offer you. We're not the same. You saw your entire unit die, in blood and agony around you, and it has shaken and disturbed you in a way that no one, least of all me, can understand or explain to you. You've just got to work that out for yourself. Your men are food for worms and you're here, drinking beer. Life is cruel and death is random. Deal with it." Hard perhaps, but life is hard. Death is one of the few things that is easy.

"You can't really believe that. That death is random and pointless. That fifty marines died on Akuze and your survived because of chance." Shepard cocks an eyebrow, and drains the delicate glass again. Williams is letting her lip curl unconsciously, looking at her like she is an alien or a monster. She will never know what it is that makes this woman so passionate about something so pointless.

"Or that a hundred soldiers died on Eden Prime and you survived because of chance?" She asks, and it is not done kindly. "It wasn't chance. I survived because I refused to die. I could have. I even thought about it. But in the end I made a choice not to."

"Bullshit." Williams says again, heat rising in her voice. "I don't believe that. I survived because God was watching over me. That's why any of die or survive."

Shepard just shrugs. She would never claim to be a spiritualist or an atheist, and she does not know what name people who simply never think of such things go by. Philosophy is something she has always considered pointless in a life such as hers, and if there is something waiting before the monstrous, looming darkness of death she will deal with it when it comes to her.

"If what happened to me on Akuze was supposed to be some sort of gift from God, he has a really sick and disgusting sense of humour." She says finally. It is not the answer Williams expected or wanted from this conversation. Sighing, Shepard shrugs her shoulders.

"Just deal with it." She repeats firmly. Williams turns back to her empty glass, wordlessly. It is obvious that she is regretting her decision to come over and speak to her strange, stoic commander. After a moment Shepard's omnitool lights up. Anderson needs to see her.

"Duty beckons." She says, standing up. She pushes the remaining liquor towards the ashen faced Chief. "Finish this up for me, will you?"

"Not a fan of alien liquor, Commander." She replies. Shepard supposes she should have expected a response like that. She sighs.

"One piece of advice I can offer you?' She asks. After a moment the Chief inclines her head, ready to listen.

"Get really drunk, and then laid. You'll wake up with a hang over that will take your mind off things. For a little while at least. It helps." She squares her shoulders and offers a small salute. "Have a good night, Williams."

"Commander."

She does not look over her shoulder to see if Williams has taken up the bottle, or is eyeing any of the young men gathered in the club for the proposed night of carnal pleasure. It does not matter. If Anderson wants to see her, that means that her ship is ready. She doubts she will ever see the Gunnery Chief again.

It does not matter that she provided such dark, unhelpful answers to the woman's plight. Does not matter that she showed, just for a moment, how dark and broken she really is at her core. Williams will be just another soldier who thinks she knows something, anything about the great Commander Shepard. It does not matter. Her life is changing once again, carrying her away from everything she has known up to this point. She is sure of it.

When she reaches the dock, and realizes how wrong she is, it effects her less than it probably should.

This is the way with most things.

* * *

This was a very difficult chapter to write. I tried to make Shepard come off as a Renegade without being too terribly obnoxious about it. Really obnoxious commanders seldom demand very much respect, I think.


End file.
